Subscription ecommerce fundraising financial model

If you are building a subscription commerce startup, there is no model like this on the internet. Combines both subscription and traditional ecommerce product sales in one model. Features highly granular revenue forecasting with monthly cohort level modeling. A full stack of marketing options from paid to social and email drive sales. 3 years (36 months) of detailed P&L for actual, forecast and combined, as well as cash based analysis. Manually plan out your hiring of staff and automate support staff depending on how you scale. Charts, KPIs, all your COGS mapped out. Unique source and use sheet illustrates your plan for your pitch deck. And a lot more…

Are you the next Dollar Shave Club or Birchbox? I was asked multiple times by founders for a model that could meet their needs, that was neither a pure ecommerce model nor SaaS model. So I combined elements of both together to build a highly versatile model to meet your needs. This is one of the larger models available. Enjoy impressive results without months of modeling.

The 50Folds subscription commerce financial model is the most comprehensive and powerful excel model available for founders. Nothing else comes close. If you are looking to impress investors with a thoughtful plan, this is it.

As the CEO or CFO (or sole founder…) are you wondering how the hell you can model all this for your fundraising?

You should be concerned… because it’s hard as hell. Trust me. Sure, you might find a free template (I’m happy to send you links to the free models online), but something actually complete and useful that just works? Forget it.

I know, because I had to do it myself.

Well, to be clear I’ve had to do this myself multiple times over the years. I’ve been involved with a lot of startups and so I’ve had to build a number of models. Each time they’ve gotten better, but the process has been no less painful!

Whether you’re raising for your startup, or needing to develop an operational plan to understand how you are going to grow and not run out of cash, you need an excel model. The problem is that they’re really hard to build. You don’t have time to spend 2 months building one, you need to be executing. Paying someone smart to build one can cost $10k+ which is crazy. There has to be a better way!

I’m an ex-M&A banker and VC, and I’ve literally spent months of 100 hour weeks modelling to be able to make this model available to you. Feel free to ask your M&A buddy to build something for you for a few grand. I’ve been sent those models (as I’ve been asked to make a new one after). They’re not terrible, but they don’t make sense as they don’t understand how startup works.

The 50Folds subscription ecommerce financial model is the most comprehensive and powerful fundraising excel model available for founders. Nothing else comes close. If you are looking to impress investors with a thoughtful plan, this is it.

If you truly want to understand your operations in detail, then download it now.

Are you growing like a rocket and don’t have the time to fill out the model, but want the results? No stress. We’ll build it for you.

This model comes with 20 minutes of consulting to help you get the most out of it.

Below we will look at the high level features of the model, screen shots on each sheet and some further descriptions.

Kindly note this price is low just for founders raising. If you need models for a professional reason, please reach out regarding licensing at [email protected]

If you have questions about the model, feel free to ask.

Details on the model

Many startups ago… I built my first fundraising model. I had toiled for years in M&A so knew something about modeling, but man… what I built still wasn’t really useful and it distracted me from when I should have been executing, pushing sales, tracking my marketing KPIs etc. Darn.

Fast forward many years and I’ve learnt a thing or two. I’ve raised for myself and many others. For my startups and for other’s I’ve done fundraising for, I’ve built a number of models. They were all solid, but they weren’t mind-blowing (in my opinion). A founder reached out to me for an ecommerce model when I was studying data science by the beautiful beaches in Bali and I thought, screw it. Let’s make something cool.

Over the course of a month, I pulled all the cool stuff I had coded before, analysed the models I have, studied the pros and I built this model. Figuring out how to do some of the calculations was almost enough to make me quit… Founders seemed to like the model, so I built others such as for SaaS and Enterprise SaaS and then Apps. I took the learnings and improvements from those models and combined them to build a hybrid model.

Whether you’re raising for your subscription startup, or needing to develop an operational plan to understand how you are going to grow and not run out of cash, you need an excel model. The problem is that they’re really hard to build. You don’t have time to spend 2 months building one, you need to be executing like I wish I had. Sure, maybe you have an expensive, smart CFO, but they’re still running your company, and the RoI on their time to replicate what I am doing is ignorant. For the cost of a an hour of their time (or mine), you skip months of development and get straight into inputing your actuals and forecasts. This is a no brainer.

Resent buying a model, and feel better paying someone to build a model for you? Sure, paying someone smart to build something sort of usable can cost $10k+. You won’t even get what you want. I’ve seen the models ex-bankers build. They don’t get startup. They think like bankers.

Want to find a free one? Sure. I found around 5 others which weren’t bad, but just really limited in terms of functionality. These don’t solve the problem of just having something which just works and gets you back to scaling your users (Which actually matters).

This is the model I wish existed. I literally built it for you. I only build new things which add value to founders, not copy others.

The subscription financial model is a combination of the best aspects of multiple exceptional fundraising models which have closed single and double digit $ VC rounds, and learnings over many years of model building. All the learnings from top tier VCs have been included. The best approaches have been combined and improved upon to deliver the definite model for founders who are going to execute big results.

This was specifically based off two models I made which founders have used to raise millions of dollars.

We’ve drawn on our years of experience operating startups at early and growth stage to create something that just works. There is not a needless level of detail, nor a sparsity of assumptions to illustrate a depth of logic and insight. Everything included has been considered as to whether it adds value and if investors will “want to know and ask.” The structure also enables founders to change the model to fit the exact needs of their startup (particularly in revenue forecasting).

Are you building the next top subscription ecommerce startup? Need to provide a AAA model for Venture Capitalists to secure a big round or just understand your operational requirement in detail for strategic planning? Do you need a detailed model to understand every key aspect of your business? This is it.

This model is for all ecommerce companies that have a subscription business model. The model forecasts for a three year period on a monthly basis.

Subscription and product ecommerce: Enables you to have three types of customers. 1/ Subscription with monthly or annual (with discount) payment. 2/ Product customers who only buy product from you. 3/ Product and subscription customers which do both

Flexible for actuals and forecasts: Actual and forecasts with sheets which combine your numbers in P&Ls to the exact month magically

Staff: Manual and automated forecasting of staff. For most staff you can decide the month your staff will join (Such as developers or a CFO) and the month they are terminated. Furthermore you can set a date and salary increase (such as post-series-A) and salaries will increase on that date, and adjusted for bonus and payroll taxes and benefits. For support, recruitment and channel sales staff, your staff requirement flexes as you scale automagically to your desired assumptions

Cohort approach to forecasting: Get a cohort based forecasting model without the work. Input a few assumptions and you can see the revenue, costs, orders and units from each monthly cohort, for both first and repeat orders

Comprehensive marketing plan: Forecast your entire marketing plan across viral, paid, organic, email, blog and social media channels with no heavy lifting. All the relationships between the channels are deeply integrated so social rebroadcasts will result in newsletter sign-ups. Forecast users in Android and Apple channels

Detailed KPIs: Full dashboard of all your KPIs

Charts: Breadth of beautiful charts to graphically explain your business

Full blown P&L: Detailed, logical P&L explaining your business model step by step in the secret style some of the fastest growing internet companies in the world use, that is now available to you!

Dynamic year end: Set your year end at a month of your choosing. All annual adjustments are made automatically with powerful formulas

Accounting: Cash and revenue accounting

Forecast period: 36 months of forecasting with 12 month summaries for each forecast year

Change assumptions every month: Make the subscription ecommerce financial model assumptions as simple or complicated as you like. Every assumption is mapped out on it’s own row. For example, any month you want to increase your pricing for consignment repeat purchasing, simply change that month. If you want to keep your assumptions linear, the formulas support that decision automatically and by standard. Most growth assumptions also come with ‘optimisation’ rows

Download now

The subscription model is available through SSL secured purchase via a startup called Gumroad (Support startups). This took months and is priced at 45 mins of my consulting time. The model will be immediately emailed to you.

Model Q&A

The model is very detailed and powerful. It assumes you have a decent understanding of your business model and navigating excel. Every effort has been made to make it simple for a founder to get impressive results without having to be advanced in model structuring (We did the hard work). But to be clear, these are no joke, the most advanced models in the world available to you.

We don’t offer returns, but want to make sure you succeed; so if you are new to excel and the ecommerce business and aren’t willing to put in some work to learn, this model might not be for you. Spend a few $k and get someone to make something simpler for you.

If you don’t know how to use a (SUM) function you may find it overwhelming if you need to understand every detail. Every line has been broken up to be logical to understand, so with a little diligence anyone can be a total boss.

If you don’t understand how marketing works (such as what CTR is), then this model may have too much detail for you to handle.

You will have to invest to make the model work properly. Most cells have template numbers in them, but this is a model for big boys. It will NOT take 20 mins to complete

There are a number of additions which could have been added to this model and have purposefully not included. If you have seen models with other frills, trust there are reasons why they have not been included. Let’s go through some of these so you understand:

Traditional cash flow statement and balance sheet: There is a cash based accounting section to understand your actual cash burn. Investors don’t really care about your BS and CFS sheets like a PE company would. They care about the logic of your model to show it is thoughtful. They care how much revenue you will generate to size the market opportunity (how they will get rich) and how ambitious you are. The BS and CFS are useful at growth stage companies when there is a line of sight on meaningful forecasts- early stage you don’t really have many reliable numbers so they serve to create information overload

Detailed inventory forecasting and logistics: The VCs are investing in you and the potential. The timing of shipments from China and what you model as how many units fit in a container don’t matter. Yes, you need to include the high-level costs, but you don’t need to have this level of detail in your model. It should be taken for granted you know how to execute. We forecast your inventory through inventory days, which is a nice simple way of doing it

GAAP and IFRS accounting: This model is based off an approach used by high-growth ecommerce companies like Rocket Internet which is more insightful for these purposes. You can share your accounts in IFRS if you have ‘actuals,’ but your forecasts don’t need to adhere to these accounting standards. Generally though, all the principles of accounting are applied as feasible

Cap table: It is best to have this separately so it is a distinct conversation rather than bundling it with your forecasts. We have super cap tables for you to download on this site!

DCF and valuation: Having a DCF at early stage is totally ridiculous, particularly as the assumptions don’t make sense (What’s your discount rate? Show me how to do your WACC…). A DCF is also not how VCs value early stage companies. Including a DCF or multiples is not how you want to approach a valuation discussion with investors and I think can actually harm you in negotiations. I recommend not putting a valuation in the model

Complicated paid marketing assumptions: We want to show logic not needless complexity. There is some very smart logic in calculations for emails and the like, but we try keep the number of assumptions down so you can discuss what’s important (Like CPC and budget, not keyword volumes)

Growth modelling: If you are at growth stage, you will have a lot more visibility on your actuals and have more historic reporting. This is not the best approach to modelling and fundraising for you. But the cool thing is, if you know basic excel, it’s easy to add columns for your actuals if you like

Startup is hard and fundraising is a total nightmare. It takes up so much time and it can be far easier to execute if you have the right tools to hand.

When we started Delivery Hero I spent far too much time figuring out how to build a good fundraising and operation model and it was infuriating. I wished I had something that just worked, or a base I could use to fiddle with and get the result I wanted (Meaning, getting back to executing). We’re making these models so you don’t have the same painful, long nights and weeks, not executing like I wished I could have.

Every effort has been made to ensure there are no errors. Given the size and impressive depth it is impossible to ensure there are none. If you find an error, please reach out so it can be fixed for everyone! We are happy to help you fix any errors free of charge

If you need support building your model we offer a consulting service dependent on your bespoke needs

You need Excel. Google Sheets is never to be used for a fundraising model as the functionality is limited. It might work in Sheets, but I can’t warrant it will work. I highly recommend using a PC and Excel

This works on both Mac and PC and was built on both (But Mac sucks)

You should install the ‘Solver Add-in’ and ‘Analysis TookPak’ if you do not have it installed already. These are free and standard Microsoft add-ins. I don’t require it, but it’s worth having

We do not have circular references so there is no need for ‘iterations’ in this model, but in case, turn them on in your calculation settings, especially if you fiddle.

This is not needed, but if you want to be a boss in Excel, download http://www.asap-utilities.com/. There are some really useful tools if you need to build models. It only works on PC though (as do the other cool tools).

Model screenshots

The sheets in the model

Formatting

Input the start dates for the actuals and forecasts to start. These are key to align actual and forecast in the model output sheets

P&L Actual

This is the P&L of your actual numbers. These can feed into the combined P&L and they are used to connect your actuals to forecasts (e.g. customers to get recurring income)

P&L Forecast

Detailed forecast P&L of your startup. This mainly pulls in all the numbers fromother sheets, with only a few assumptions to input

P&L Combined

This combines the forecast and actual sheets together. There are no assumptions

P&L for Deck

This combines the summary forecast and actual sheets together for the first 12 months and for 3 years annual to insert in your pitch deck. Change to whatver you want

Source and Use

Use this to figure out how much to raise and to present your ‘sources and use’ of money you raise in your ‘ask’ slide

KPI – Subs

Some KPIs for your subscription side of the business (A bit more SaaS like)

KPI

A detailed summary of all your KPIs

Charts

Summary of charts from across sheets

Staff

Forecasts for all staff (Other than warehouse, photography and customer care staff). All the related staff and G&A costs

Forecast your SKU and the revenue and cost basis per SKU. This is for the product part of the business (not subscription)

Product – Cohort Build

Orders and revenue are forecasted by cohort in detail for non-subscription part of business. All assumptions are at the top. Mechanics are below

Conversion assump

All the assumptions that drive your revenue calculations. This sheet is key, takes marketing users and you divide them into product/subscription users and other key assumptions

Sub – Calcs – Monthly

Calculate the monthly portion of your subscription users. There are NO assumptions on this sheet

Sub – Calcs – Annual

Calculate the annual portion of your subscription users. There are NO assumptions on this sheet

Sub – MRR & Cust Summary

A summary of your subscription calculations (The calculations in the monthly and annual sheets are long)

Marketing

Centralizes the marketing data and applies conversion rates to create ‘registered users’ of your site (Which then buy, or you can simplify with one conversion rate, depending on your funnel)

Paid & organic

Organic growth and paid traffic to the site. Feeds to the traffic build in ‘Marketing’

Email

Calculates the sign ups to your email database. Feeds to the traffic build in ‘Marketing’

Blog & Social

Calculates the traffic that comes from promotion activities by blogging and social media. Feeds to the traffic build in ‘Marketing’

Video training course

Coming soon.

Download now

The subscription commerce model is available through SSL secured purchase via a startup called Gumroad (Support startups). This took months and is priced at 45 mins of my consulting time. The model will be immediately emailed to you.